Hillary Rodham Clinton isn’t just running against Republicans. She’s also running against parts of her husband’s legacy.

On issues large and small, the Democratic presidential contender is increasingly distancing herself from — or even opposing — key policies pushed by Bill Clinton while he was in the White House, from her recent skepticism on free-trade pacts to her full embrace of gay rights.

The starkest example yet came Wednesday, when Hillary Clinton delivered an impassioned address condemning the “era of incarceration” ushered in during the 1990s in the wake of her husband’s 1994 crime bill — though she never mentioned him or the legislation by name.

“We have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance,” Clinton told an audience at Columbia University in New York, making references to unrest in Baltimore and elsewhere following deaths at the hands of police. “And these recent tragedies should galvanize us to come together as a nation to find our balance again.”

The contrasts between some of Clinton’s positions and those of her husband from 20 years ago show the extent to which Democrats, and the country as a whole, have shifted to the left on a number of key issues. Indeed, Bill Clinton now says that some of his incarceration policies went too far and he regrets backing a federal law that defined marriage as being between a man and a woman….